Mr. Ciaran Fitzgerald:

I will take the issue of price in general and the comments made by Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív and others and what is the proper price barometer. In the past ten years, and particularly in the past five, prices have increased by 40%. From a European perspective, from about the mid-1980s to 2005, we were getting about 90% of the average EU price for our beef. That was our price and that was the European price. This transition and transformation in the past five years has delivered a situation where we are now at around 100% of the EU average but, for large periods of last year, we well above that level. That is the first point. The delivery piece has been quite exceptional and has been delivered not just by a rising tide but by increased investment and value added.

In terms of the other piece of that and how one makes comparisons, this industry has transformed dramatically. We sell cuts of beef. We do not sell carcases or live animals. Therefore, to take any particular live animal price in a market and try to reassemble that back to what should have happened and what is the best barometer of that price for a live animal in an Irish factory is just not comparing the same thing. The barometer that is most used - we hear much about it when it suits - is the R3 UK price which is for an animal that is UK based and gets a red tractor certification for it. We do not produce or sell that animal. We sell boneless beef cuts right across the EU. We export 0.5 billion tonnes of beef per year to the European market, 50% of that goes to the rest of the European Union and 50% goes to the UK. Clearly, in that marketing mix, one is trying to get the best price right across for all cuts. That is how one gets to the price recovery we are talking about.

In terms of barometers, while going back ten or 20 years one can pick a particular live animal price on the market and say we should aspire to that, we do not sell live animals any more. We do not sell animals that have red tractor certifications attached to them; we are selling boneless beef. All of that being said, the price recovery here has been quite exceptional, it has been strongly delivered by an investment in the selling of fresh beef from Ireland. The reason we get into markets is not just because there are broad supply and demand conditions, it is because hard work is done by Irish processors to secure supermarket contracts and contracts with companies such as McDonalds and others. That is the reason we have the profile for our beef sales. In response to this price comparison piece, one needs to look at what the industry here is selling and any of the barometers one might choose to use. Mr. Cormac Healy might deal with some of the other issues.